The Clue of the Lion
by The Agatha Christiean
Summary: Miss Marple comes to stay with a former classmate of hers, Lady Geraldine Kilterbury, and talk turns to murder, specifically, a beauty who was killed the year school let out.
1. Chapter 1

Lord Harold Kilterbury was a very curious old man. In reality, he was about sixty years old, but he appeared to be about a hundred and six, an effect which he sought to produce through an unshakable expression of mistrust which plastered his face whenintroduced  
/to friends of his wife.

It appeared, though she recalled it only vaguely, that Miss Marple had been at school with his wife Geraldine.

Lady Kilterbury, or Miss Heartfield as she had been then, had been called (for some inexplicable reason) Bonnie. And, though not frightfully unattractive, she was the plainer of her two friends: Ann Chapman, who was lovely in a foreign way, and Lizzie  
/Walters,who had been 'walking out', as they say, with a terribly wealthy young heir.

Lizzie, who had been put in the family way by an engineer she had been having an affair with, disappeared off the face of the earth soon after the birth of her son. Which was really quite a pity, Miss Marple reflected, for she was really the brightest  
/of the three, and Miss Deering (the headmistress) expected her to go the farthest.

And dear Ann - so refreshingly exotic. But, Miss Marple reasoned, one ought only to tell people 'I'd rather not say' when asked about one's parentage, and it would create most effectively a mysterious aura. They'd found out, long after she'd leftthe  
/school, that she'd been the daughter of a rather unsuccessful farmer in Cornwall.

But Bonnie was quite a diligent girl, and she'd been the only one of the three girls to have made something of herself. Jane Marple wondered if Bonnie had invited the other girls as well.

Kilterbury House was a two-hour drive from London, so Miss Marple motored down in a fitful rented car paid for by Raymond. She arrived at about half-past twelve, and stayed in the car for a quarter of an hour before venturing up the garden path tothe  
/door of the House, feeling slightly embarrassed for being unpleasantly early for the luncheon.

A faded-looking woman opened the door, and pushed up her pince-nez in recognition as she realized who her petticoat-clad visitor was.

'Jane!' Bonnie Kilterbury cried, flinging her bony arms around her former classmate. 'It's been absolutely ages!'

Miss Marple agreed, a shade less vehemently, wondering at Bonnie's newly acquired accent.

'Have you,' Miss Marple began, setting down her attaché-case on the pink marble floor of Kilterbury House. 'Been in America since we met last?'

'Australia, dear,' Lady Kilterbury explained, calling a stiff-collared young maid to take Miss Marple's things. 'I was married once before, but widowed quite quickly, thank goodness, or I'd have never met Harry - hello, darling.'

LordHarold swaggeredinto the room, scrunching up his face like an ancient tortoise, and kissed Bonnie's silver head.

'Who's this, Gerry?' Lord Kilterbury asked, suspiciously.

'I've - er - given up being called Bonnie. Harry doesn't like it very much,' Lady Kilterbury fluttered.

'I see,' Miss Marple smiled. 'I do hope I'm not the first to arrive - I do so _hate_ being early to things.'

'You needn't worry about that. Lizzie's arrived. Oh, Harold, this is a former classmate of mine, Jane - you _are_ unmarried, aren't you? - Marple.'

'Delighted,' Lord Kilterbury replied, sounding less than elated.

'You said Lizzie's arrived?' Miss Marple asked, kindly.

'Yes,' Geraldine answered, excitedly. 'Only she's Mrs Fenn now.'

'Don't gossip, Gerry,' her husband scolded. 'Introduce the old biddy to the godforsaken woman if you want, but don't gossip.'

'Of course, Harold,' Bonnie - Gerry, rather - smiled quickly. 'Just this way, Jane.'

Lizzie Fenn sat in the Yellow Room of the house, with an attractive young man sitting in an armchair by her.

'Jane!' Lizzie stood up from her easy-chair, offering a scarlet-nailed hand for Jane to shake. Lizzie, in her avatar as Mrs Fenn, still cut quite an impressive figure, with auburn hair neatly bobbed, and lips and cheeks that were respectivelypainted  
/and caked with rouge.

'This must be your son,' Jane remarked, referring to the man that in the armchair that was shadowed by a potted fern.

'Yes,' Lizzie smiled, with sharp white teeth. 'Aubrey, this is a school friend of mine - Miss Marple.'

Aubrey Fenn stood up, and displayeda charming half-smile through closed lips. He was dark-haired and had hazeleyes that glittered when he smiled.

'How very lovely,' he said huskily. 'You must have been the fifthgirl in that photograph by the swimming-pool.'

Miss Marple looked at Lady Kilterbury questioningly, wondering which photograph it was.

'It's rather a recreation of mine,' Gerry said apologetically, opening a walnut bureau silently, and taking out a picture in a wooden frame. 'I was wondering if I could find all the people in the photograph.'

'Rather a cold trail,' laughed Aubrey, with the skepticism of the young.

'I remembered you quite well, Jane,' Gerry said eagerly. 'And I find Raymond West's stuff quite wonderful, so when I read in the preface of _An Aunt or Two_ that Aunt Frederica was based on clever Miss Jane Marple, I telephoned his people and  
/tracked you down, and then I sent you the letter of invitation.'

'Tell them about Mum,' Aubrey urged.

'I was getting to it, Aubrey. I read the obituary notice of Terence Fenn, and found that his widow was Elizabeth Angela Fenn, née Walters. Your middle name was quite a stroke of luck - ' Geraldine chortled lightly. 'And I rang up to offer my

recognized my voice at once, so I sent in the invitation to the forwarding address she told me.'

Geraldine Kilterbury looked as lean and eager as a greyhound, panting softly from the strain of recollection.

'What about Ann?' Lizzie asked.

'Now how…?' Lady Kilterbury squirmed for a moment, adjusting her pince-nez nervously. 'Oh, yes. We received a wedding invitation from a crony of my husband's - Major Leech - and he was marrying his secretary. Ann Chapman!'

Yes, Miss Marple nodded faintly. Bonnie was a diligent girl.

'What about the fifth girl?' Miss Marple queried.

'Well,' Lizzie Fennsaid, combing through her hair with her hands. 'She was killed the year we graduated.'


	2. Chapter 2 I Fiona Wright

'The actress girl?' Lady Kilterbury asked, pronouncing the second word as though it were a rare and painful disease.

'She played Desdemona in the film adaptation of _Othello_ , didn't she?' Mrs Fenn asked. 'She looked so much older than the rest of us. Look at the photograph, she looks practically twenty-eight.'

'I just find it too funny seeing little Jane in her bathing-suit,' Aubrey Fenn laughed.

Miss Marple, ignoring his snide remark, mused, 'She reminds me of the milkman's fiancée, Miss Gibson - a very trustworthy young thing, but the poor dear was quite flighty, _and_ too talkative for her own good. Her husband had embezzled from a farm,  
/only about three pounds, but after Miss Gibson blurted it out, he was fined quite a lot of money.'

'Does she?' Elizabeth Fenn yawned, stretching out her long, slender arms.

'Did they make any arrests?' Miss Marple asked. 'For her death?'

Mrs Fenn thought for a moment, then replied, 'Yes. And they kept it out of the newspapers, too, so you didn't hear about it, Bonnie.'

'Ah,' said Lady Kilterbury thoughtfully.

Lord Kilterbury entered the room, with the expression of one braving foreign wilds, his eyes squinted and hands trembling by his sides.

'Are you talking about the girl who was stabbed?' Harold Kilterbury asked, sighing. 'I thought I told you not to gossip, Gerry.'

'Yes, but they were telling me - '

She was cut off by the entrance of a woman Miss Marple recognized with surprise to be Ann Chapman - Leech, rather.

Her hair was a gingery-blonde, and her cheeks were as pale as freshly fallen snow. Her mouth had lost its elusive smile, and instead smiled familiarly, in the manner of a woman more inclined to be submissive than domineering.

'Don't look so shocked, Jane,' Annlaughed. 'I dyed my hair and rouged my cheeks all those years at school, and I sat up nights practicing my charming smile.'

'Well, I never!' Mrs Fenn cried, and Lady Kilterbury fell to the ground in a faint.


	3. Chapter Three I The Next Day

A routine resumed as normal soon after Ann's arrival at Kilterbury House, with each guest assuming a household role, guiltily relishing the luxuries that were lavished upon them.

Miss Marple began, at once, knitting scarves and socks for Lord and Lady Kilterbury, assisting, from time to time, in the solving of Lord Kilterbury's crossword puzzle, especially when clues were to do with household items such as brands of laundry detergentor  
/materials for clothes-pegs.

Mrs Fenn assisted in the kitchen, since the only full-timehelp hired by the Kilterburys was an unsophisticated maid named Esther, who couldn't pronounce the word 'soufflé', much less make one.

Aubrey acted somewhat grudgingly as Lord Harold's secretary, typing out what the Lord barked out to him, muttering all the while about the fellow's uncanny resemblance to a baked apple.

And Ann, much to everyone's surprise, did the dusting, cushion-airing, and assorted light housework, humming what sounded suspiciously like an operatic aria as she did so.

Miss Marple's room was next to Mrs Fenn's, so she entered the latter's room by accident as she was walking through the hallway.

She was about to turn away from it, when she noticed a letter written in red ink lying half-unfolded on a writing-desk. Quickly and gingerly, Miss Marple peered at its contents.

 _Dear sister Elizabeth,_ it read,

 _The times are of the most desperateurgency. Prove your allegiance to the Sisterhood, or be forever condemned from it. Bloodmust pour for blood to be linked. Remember this before it is too late. A task commanded is a task completed._

 _Sister Renée has already suffered._

 _Think wisely._

The letter was unsigned, but Miss Marple let out a sudden gasp of shock. What did the letter mean? Surely dear Mrs Fenn couldn't be involved in anything as peculiar as that Sisterhood, or whatever they had called it?

Hearing the muffled click of high-heels on a carpet, Miss Marple quickly folded the letter, and dropped to her knees.

'Jane? Is that you?' Mrs Fenn asked, standing in the doorway.

'Yes,' Jane replied, lifting herself up with a slight flash of pain in her arthritic hips. 'I'd lost my brooch, you see, as I was walking down the hall, and I thought it might have fallen - '

'Yes, yes,' Lizzie interrupted, impatiently. 'I'll give it to that idiot Esther to give to you if I find it.'

Lizzie glanced nervously at the letter on the table. 'You haven't been going through my things, I hope?' She asked, pleasantly.

'I wouldn't dream of it,' assured Miss Marple, slipping through the door as fast as she could go.

* * *

A tray of tea and scones dropped to the floor with a deafening crash.

'I'm terribly sorry, marm,' Esther cried, jumping like a frightened rabbit.

'Oh, it's quite alright, Esther,' Lady Kilterbury murmured. 'If you'll clean up this mess quite promptly, please.'

'Of course, Your Ladyship.'

Geraldine Kilterbury fluttered away, leaving a confused maid among shards of broken porcelain and crumbled scones.

She entered the Yellow Room, and examined the photograph that had been moved from the bureau to a small round table between a pair of chintzed armchairs by the fireplace.

Lady Kilterbury noticed with dismay a stain on the glass of the frame, a darkened smudge on Fiona's raised hands.

'Ann!' She called, walking upstairs.

* * *

Aubrey Fenn was exhausted. Lord Harold had been a pain in the neck - oh, if only he'd been a doctor, as his late unlamented adoptive fatherwould have liked for him to be, instead of parasitically draining money from his mother.

Well, it was no use dwelling on the past. He remembered, during the luncheon, a pretty young housekeeper, and escaped for a moment to the library, where, he felt sure, he would find her.

And, sure enough, she was there, sorting through domestic accounts in a large black notebook. She looked up as he entered.

'Ah, Mr Fenn,' she smiled pleasantly.

'It's a pleasure, Miss - '

'Hawthorne,' the girl replied. She was really a sliver of a thing, so willowy in an agreeable summer-dress. 'Catherine.'

'And you can call me Aubrey, as well. I say, would you fancy a dance?'

'A dance?' Miss Hawthorne sounded as though she had never heard the word before.

'Yes, I can put the gramophone on and we'll dance.'

'Oh, please!' The housekeeper cried, flinging her pen aside.

* * *

'Who's put on the gramophone?' Mrs Fenn asked, squarely dicing a carrot.

Esther looked out the window, for the ballroom was vertically opposite to the kitchen, divided by a small enclosure of low-hanging shrubs.

'It's Mr Fenn, marm,' Esther pronounced, saying Aubrey's family name as though it were a portion of a fish's anatomy. 'Dancing with Miss Hawthorne.'

Lizzie laughed heartily, throwing her auburn head back. 'The housekeeper, isn't she? A lovely girl all the same.'

Esther agreed, attempting to chop a potato, but piercingher finger instead.


End file.
